Headline: IASS Policy Brief 3/2013 published – Establishing a Sustainable Development Goal on Cities

Multi-level governance, when taken seriously, requires integrative elements, and a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) on Cities should be one of them. Besides addressing rapid urbanisation and its impact on sustainable development, a stand-alone SDG on Cities would bring political benefits to the post-2015 development agenda. It would empower local governments within the post-2015 framework, encourage nation-states to strengthen vertical policy integration and disaggregated monitoring; foster local alliances in sustainable development (SD) domains other than climate change; and enhance the visibility of SDGs at societal level. Therefore, the present policy brief explicitly supports the current campaign for an SDG on Cities, as initiated by the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), UN-Habitat, and several local government associations.

The Policy Brief explains what we consider to be essential elements of an SDG on Cities. The ‘soft power’ of global goals will rely on the ability of different actors to recognize and to appropriate them as a political tool. Therefore, the Rio+20 call for goals that are “easy to communicate” and “limited in number” should also apply to the targets comprised by each goal. Local administrations, citizens and media should be able to easily grasp what an urban SDG is about, even if this means giving up ‘comprehensiveness’ in favour of a few representative, exemplary targets. These targets, on the other hand, should have benefits across more than one SD dimension, and they should – as far as possible – be within the responsibility of local decision makers.

Please find the Policy Brief here